Prince Harry is wrong: unconscious bias is not different to racism
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When Prince Harry with ITV journalist Tom Bradby for a conversation about his marriage, his estrangement from the royal family and his tell-all memoir, Spare, one particular segment stood out. Bradby said that Harry had accused some members of his family of racism, but Harry shook his head firmly.
鈥淭he difference between racism and unconscious bias,鈥� he said, 鈥渢he two things are different.鈥� He went on to argue that unconscious bias could become racism if it was pointed out to the perpetrator and left unchecked.
The exchange between Harry and Bradby has prompted widespread debate. In , on , and on , people have rightly questioned whether Harry鈥檚 family members really were unaware of their own biases, whether it mattered, and whether their views could be disconnected from racism.
When a person expresses racial bias, then that bias, conscious or not, is racism. But racism won鈥檛 be overcome simply by pointing out unconscious bias. Instead, anti-racism means challenging the systems and institutions that have made racism 鈥渃ommon sense鈥�.
Testing for unconscious bias
This is not the first time Harry has appealed to the concept of unconscious bias in order to explain individual behaviour. In September 2019, he that 鈥渢he way that you鈥檝e been brought up, the environment you鈥檝e been brought up in, suggests that you have this point of view 鈥� unconscious point of view 鈥� where naturally you will look at someone in a different way鈥�.
Harry isn鈥檛 the first to claim that unconscious bias can be challenged, either. From the Labour Party leader to accountancy firm , prominent people and institutions routinely respond to charges of racism by pledging to combat unconscious bias.
The concept of unconscious bias has its origins in psychology. In 1995, US psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald that unconscious attitudes and stereotypes shaped people鈥檚 understandings and, in turn, their actions. They said that a child growing up in a racist society 鈥� with racially segregated neighbourhoods and schools, racist depictions in the media and parents and teachers propagating racial stereotypes 鈥� will internalise racism without realising it. They would then go on to express racist views unconsciously.
Building on this idea, in 1998, Banaji and Greenwald worked with social-cognitive psychologist Brian Nosek to develop the implicit association test (IAT). This has since become a popular tool in classrooms and corporate diversity . On the IAT , users can test their unconscious bias with regard to a wide array of categories, ranging from race and gender to ability and nationality.
The concept has gained further traction in the fields of , and .
What unconscious bias doesn鈥檛 tell us
The appeal of the IAT and the concept itself lies in its simple design. As a tool, it demonstrates just how widely held racist attitudes are 鈥�- particularly among people who are not conscious of holding them.
It is, however, precisely this simplicity that makes the concept inadequate. The IAT presents users with a succession of words and images, including the names and faces of Black and white people, and asks them to categorise them as 鈥済ood鈥� or 鈥渂ad鈥�, as quickly as possible. The user then receives a score, which shows their level of unconscious bias.
Left out of this test is any analysis of where users鈥� associations might have originated. Research has long shown that pervades society at every level, from and the to the and systems.
When Harry states that members of his family hold unconscious bias, he does not situate this within the larger context of institutional racism. This is particularly concerning when we consider who, exactly, he is talking about.
The royal family is the institution at the heart of power in Britain. Members of this family derive their and from political and social institutions that are the product of racism and colonialism. But ascribing only unconscious bias to these family members ignores these institutional roots. It reduces racial prejudice to the conscious, deliberate attitudes of individuals.
Further, for people on the sharp end of racist violence, it matters little whether the people responsible were conscious of their attitudes and actions or not. Unconscious bias only makes sense from the vantage point of the perpetrator. Black people face the same detrimental consequences, regardless of whether the perpetrators of racism are conscious of their bias or not.
prescribe fewer painkillers to Black patients than to white patients, even though they report similar levels of pain. hand down custodial sentences for Black and Asian offenders that are 1.5 times longer than for white offenders. are twice as likely to deny compensation to Black fraud victims as they are to white victims.
Unconscious bias is useful as a tool for helping people who think racism is irrelevant to them 鈥� that is, people who hold power in a racist society 鈥� to understand that their biases are the product of institutional racism. But suggesting that unconscious bias is somehow less harmful than racism posits the latter as something only to be overcome at the individual level. The institutions that made racism possible, and, crucially, the people on the sharp end of its effects, remain invisible.
, Presidential Fellow in Ethnicity and Inequalities,
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